Sales Negotiation Training

"How To Choose The Best Training For Your Team"

Why consider sales negotiation training? All of us negotiate almost every day of our lives. As sales professionals, negotiations are a big part of what we do for a living. However, sales negotiation training is something that relatively few sales people have taken. The ability to negotiate well is one of the most vital attributes to help a salesperson excel. It is a skill that benefits every salesperson.

Most people did do not negotiate well for multiple reasons. They may be afraid to try, embarrassed to ask for what they want, or simply lack the skills to negotiate effectively. To sales people are aware of the myriad of opportunities there are to negotiate in every sale situation and in everyday life.

As a manager, improving your sales force's negotiation skills, can save your company money, increase profit margins, enhance win rates, and increase your sales velocity.

How to Choose Sales Negotiation Training for Your Team

There are numerous types of negotiation training, and various ways of learning the skills. There are negotiation books, workshops, and deliverables available for all types of negotiation requirements from those for diplomats, labor negotiators, politicians, and others. But as a sales manager you need to focus on training that addresses the appropriate skills for your sales process and go to market strategy.

Start by reviewing how your salespeople interact with their customers. What major categories of discussion consume most of their time? What parts of the sales process contain most of the negotiations? Focus your effort on finding a training session to match these requirements.

Sales negotiation training can include areas such as:

• Price
• Terms and conditions
• Delivery
• Implementation
• Service and support
• Product features
• Add ons
• Meetings and scheduling
• And who pays for lunch

Questions You Should Ask When Selecting a Sales Negotiation Training

Here some key questions you can ask when selecting negotiation training for your team.

• What facets of negotiation training do you cover?
• What will my team learn from your training, and how will you guarantee it?
• What is the flow and process of your delivery?
• Does the training focus on the specific sales negotiation issues of your team?
• How can the training be tailored for my requirements?
• How do you measure success of the training?
• Do you have referrals from customers with the same negotiation issues as mine?
• How do you help ensure that the training sticks within our organization?

Methods of Delivery

There are many different ways of delivering sales presentation training.

• Books provide a good introduction to negotiation training, but they don't supply any feedback, coaching, or custom tailoring.
• Videos can give you much more graphic view of good negotiation techniques, but like books, they are lacking in feedback, coaching, and tailoring.
• E-learning programs are a lot like videos, with the added benefits of them having the ability to put in tests and alternate branches of learning if participants want to go deeper into a certain aspect of the negotiation training.
• In my estimation, instructor led training is the best way to deliver sales negotiation training. Participants can engage in role-play and get critiquing that provides instant feedback and learning. In addition, questions can be answered as they come up, and tailoring can be integrated at all levels.

How to Measure the Success of Your Negotiation Training

There are four ways to determine the effectiveness of any negotiation training in event. The first one is whether the participants enjoyed the presentation. However, having them enjoy a training event is not your primary goal. Sometimes participants learn critical new skills despite the fact they don't enjoy the process.

Acquiring new information and gaining new knowledge is the second way of measuring success. It's obvious that if you're team has not taken negotiation training before, they will probably gain new knowledge from attending a reputable training event unless they sleep through it.

The third measure is to affect behavioral changes in a positive manner for those people who went through the training. You'll be able to notice right away if your sales team engages in negotiations more actively.

The final to determine the effectiveness of your training is to actually observe and measure new results as a result of the training process. Look for leading indicators that you can track and observe which will indicate better results.

Define what success looks like for your training initiative. When you're interviewing potential vendors to deliver the negotiation training, ask them for help in measuring behavioral and results oriented changes. Make certain that part of the training process is helping your managers coach the process with their teams after the event. As with any training, it will be more successful if the managers and executives embrace the new knowledge and behaviors and can coach and refresh the knowledge and skills that are delivered in the training.

Conclusion

Sales negotiation training is very important for helping your team and yourself become more effective during sales campaigns. Engaging in effective negotiations with your client during all aspects of the selling process is important to overall sales success. Having each of your sales people be proficient at negotiating will help you increase your win rate and enhance your ability to positively affect revenue and margins. In addition, negotiation skills will serve participants in almost every interpersonal aspect of your life, whether it's your family life or buying a used car.

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